The sun had already sunk beneath the horizon, leaving only the echoes of it's brilliant glory in the sky above. The stars were slowly appearing in the deep purple vastness above him. As Luna took over dominion of the sky behind him. For the first time in weeks he didn't care. He didn't care that there was nothing ahead of him, and only an empty world behind him. He sat down not because he wanted to, but because the habit had become so familiar that it was impossible to disobey. He shook his saddle bag off of him he'd use it as a pillow.

"Ow. What the hay?" Escutcheon rubbed his head where something had poked him. He picked up the offending object. The twig which he had taken from the grove. The one he had been coming his hair with. He turned it over and over again in his hooves examining it in the fading sunlight of dusk. Soon Luna's moon would be out and he could us it to see. Not that it would matter, he couldn't see anything through the tears that streaked down from his eyes. "I'm sorry Momma I didn't mean to. I don't want to go away, Momma I don't want to." He took the twig and continued the painful process of coming out the tangles in his mane. "Please Momma, if you're here when I wake up, I'll never disobey you again. Just please Mommy be here. Please?"

He lay his head down on his saddle bag combing his mane as he cried himself to sleep. "Please." The last bastions of the day long faded as Luna's Moon rose from the Eastern horizon.